Kathleen Mallory Series

This series follows a tough NYPD detective navigating the gritty streets of New York City. Each case plunges her deeper into the city's underbelly and the complexities of the human psyche. With unwavering determination and sharp intellect, she uncovers truths that are often more intricate and dangerous than they first appear. The stories blend thrilling crime procedurals with profound character studies.

Recommended Reading Order

1
Mallory's oracle
Carol O'Connell
3.9(6163)Add rating
When Kathleen Mallory was ten she was a street kid and a thief. Then a cop called Markowitz took her home to her wife to civalize her. . . . Now Mallory is in charge of a complex database and a police officer herself, and someone has just murdered the man she considers her father -the only man she has ever loved. More used to the company of computers than people, Mallory descends into the urban nightmare of New York, to hunt down a cold-blooded killer. MALLORY'S ORACLE is a dangerous chase through the city's underworld, down the fibre-optic cables of high-tech computer networks and behind the blinds of genteel Gramercy Park - and an investigation into the chilly heart of it's damaged and elusive heroine.
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2
The man who lied to women
Carol O'Connell
304 pages
11 hours of reading
3.9(3472)Add rating
Fifteen years after Inspector Louis Markowitz adopted the wild child, no one in New York's Special Crimes section knew much about Kathy Mallory's origins. They only knew that the young cop with the soul of a thief could bewitch the most complex computer systems, could slip into the minds of killers with disturbing ease. In Central Park, a woman dies, while a witness watches, believing the brutal murder to be a prelude to a kiss. Mallory goes hunting the killer, armed with under the skin knowledge of the man's mind and the bare clue of a lie. Mallory holds on the one truth: everybody lies, and some lies can get you killed. And she knows that, to trap the killer, she must put her own life at risk, for this killer has taken a personal interest in her.
3
Killing Critics
Carol O'Connell
344 pages
13 hours of reading
4.0(2110)Add rating
'The new wave of art was first heralded by the graffiti artist who attacked the city walls - artist attacks architecture. Then it progressed to the vandal artist who scarred the art of others -artist attacks art. And now we see a further escalation in the performance - art murder of Dean Starr - artist attacks artist. This is the new wave - Art Terrorism' Bliss was not celebrated for his radical opinions, and no one suspected he might know something about a terrible crime committed twelve years earlier in one of Avril Koozeman's galleries. Inspector Louis Markowitz, who commanded the Special Crime Section in New York, had worked on that original double homicide, and now his adopted daughter, Detective Sergeant Kathy Mallory, wants to reopen the old case - against the Department's wishes. A number of people in high places are also very keen that their secrets remain buried with the dead.
4
Stone Angel
Carol O'Connell
4.1(3765)Add rating
The latest in an evocatively written series featuring free-spirited NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory has this odd, intriguing cop taking her act on the road to the rural Louisiana town where she was born. She's trying, at long last, to reach closure in the mysterious death of her mother -- stoned to death by villagers 17 years previous -- and must sift through the creepy, dangerous layers of the past to get answers.
5
Shell game
Carol O'Connell
5.0(1)Add rating
A magician dies while performing a trick on television and everyone assumes it was an accident, everyone except Kathleen Mallory of the New York police. She finds the motive in a crime involving magicians half a century earlier.
6
Crime School
Carol O'Connell
3.6(26)Add rating
New York City policewoman Kathy Mallory investigates the murder of a prostitute named Sparrow, a woman who had taken her in many years ago only to betray her, as part of a crime that seems to mimic one that happened two decades earlier.
7
The Jury Must Die
Carol O'Connell
432 pages
16 hours of reading
3.9(3115)Add rating
After bringing in a unanimous and very dubious acquittal in a murder case, only three of the original jurors remain alive. And someone, known only as the 'Reaper' because of the signature of a bloody scythe left at the crime scenes, is clearly determined to make a clean sweep of the terrified survivors. Detective Sgt. Riker, although on paid sick leave after a teenage psychopath pumped four bullets into his chest, has a keen but unofficial interest in the case. And his NYPD Special Crimes partner, Kathy Mallory, orphan, sociopath and computer genius, is resolute that there will be no more personal defections in her life, and determined to discover the identity of the killer before he, or she makes a complete mockery of justice. Meanwhile, on his increasingly popular radio show, Ian Zachary, plays a sick and dangerous game - Hunt the Juror.
8
Winter House
Carol O'Connell
368 pages
13 hours of reading
3.9(3270)Add rating
In this riveting thriller from New York Times bestselling author Carol O'Connell, New York City officer Kathleen Mallory purges a woman of her mysterious past—and the flesh-and-blood ghosts of a violent family legacy. At first, NYPD detective Kathleen Mallory thinks the case is simple: a burglar caught in the act and stabbed with an ice pick by a vulnerable homeowner. Except that the dead man was not a burglar, but a hired killer. And the homeowner is the most famous missing child in NYPD history, believed kidnapped more than sixty years ago after the massacre of her entire family...by an ice pick. As Mallory investigates, an astonishing story emerges, one of murderous greed and family horror, abandonment and loss, revenge and twisted love—and a terrifying secret that has yet to claim its final victim.
9
Shark Music
Carol O'Connell
448 pages
16 hours of reading
3.6(8)Add rating
Detective Kathy Mallory finds herself hunting a killer like none she has come across before in this acclaimed thriller by New York Times bestselling author Carol O'Connell.
10
The Chalk Girl
Carol O'Connell
448 pages
16 hours of reading
4.1(79)Add rating
Krimi. A little girl is abandoned in Central Park - her uncle's body in a tree not far away. Recognizing a kindred spirit in the girl, NYPD detective Kathy Mallory takes the case. But her investigation soon leads to a trail of murder and blackmail spanning 15 years
11
It Happens in the Dark
Carol O'Connell
416 pages
15 hours of reading
3.3(28)Add rating
The reviews called it 'a play to die for' after the woman was found dead in the front row. It didn't seem so funny the next night, when another body was found - this time the playwright's, his throat slashed. Detective Kathy Mallory takes over, but no matter what she asks, no one seems to be giving her a straight answer. Every night, an unseen backstage hand chalks up line changes and messages on a blackboard. And the ghostwriter is now writing Mallory into the play itself, a play about a long-ago massacre that may not be at all fictional.
12
Blind Sight
Carol O'Connell
432 pages
16 hours of reading
3.8(25)Add rating
Carol O'Connell's latest novel featuring Special Crimes Unit Detective Kathy Mallory has an almost Dickensian feel. In her own way, O'Connell is as quirky and elusive as Mallory. [F]or those readers looking to escape the usual police procedurals, she's the ticket Chicago Tribune